Showing posts with label Voluntaryism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Voluntaryism. Show all posts

Tuesday, 4 October 2011

Fights and Duels - Legalize them please!

Today I found outrage again on some Polish forums. This time it was due to the opinions of a certain candidate for the Polish Sejm from the political party I support. This relatively young candidate, whose chances of being elected are below absolute zero, has been endorsed by some football fan associations because he is one of the hardcore fans and supports certain practices which are part of what is considered in the mainstream as "hooligan behaviour". Namely, he has spoken in support of legalization of ustawki. These are pre-arranged meetings of groups of fans who then beat the living daylights out of each other in some remote location (the location has to be remote so that they don't attract police attention). This kind of thing is still popular in Poland and many Eastern and Central or Southern European countries. An example can be seen here. As we see they are teams of equal numbers with captains, coaches, and tactics. It is all pre-arranged and the rules are agreed to beforehand.
So, why shouldn't this kind of thing be legal, even if society at large finds it outrageous? It's completely voluntary for all participants, and the doctrine I subscribe to Voluntaryism, would seem to not be violated. When I started arguing with some people that this is in no way different from boxing (an accepted and widely popular sport in Poland) people started calling me names (this I am already used to) and using stupid arguments. One of the most common arguments used was that boxers have 'medical help' available to them, and the hooligans do not. They could get hurt! First of all, this seems strangely hypocritical, since most of these commentators say they would want the "primitive hooligans" dead anyway. Secondly, this is completely illogical. Medical help does not make something moral. In war, soldiers on both sides have medics, but most wars are immoral because they consist of aggressors and defenders. Introducing medics onto the battlefield does not make the battle moral!
Another argument used is that boxing or MMA fights are essentially controlled by regulations and external third parties (such as referees) who can stop the fight at any time. But this is a doubly-wrong argument. First of all, the regulations and third parties (such as referees) only exist there because the two fighters agreed to it in the first place. If they agreed to not having refs, there would be no refs! Nobody is allowed to force third parties into a voluntary agreement (this is the second rebuttal). For example, if I find you in bed with your wife, I cannot arrest you on the charges that your common marital bed does not meet my specifications for a husband-and-wife couple. That would be ridiculous.
Equally as ridiculous as stopping behaviours such as ustawki or one-on-one duels. Even anti-liberal Alexander Hamilton would agree with me.

Sunday, 3 April 2011

Structure of Moral Principles

Alas, I have been called a MORAL RELATIVIST! By another anarchist too! Here is our debate (comments on his blog post). And what did this come out of? Well, I simply stated that individual moral values cannot be considered more than mere opinions of the individuals themselves. This is because they are nonenforceable. If I cannot go and correct something in my neighbour's behaviour then he officially has the right to do it, and something you have the right to do cannot be immoral. The logic is simple. If this was not the case, rights wouldn't make any sense. How could someone have a right to do something immoral? That contradicts the very definition of rights. After all there is "right" and there is "wrong". Right being moral is a tautology.

"So how can we oppose things like unfairness, or exploitation on moral grounds?" asks the leftist. Firstly, I judge unfairness or exploitation through the prism of the non-aggression axiom. If someone has agreed to be treated in a certain way, then the action cannot be aggression. And if someone breaks my property rights and I punish them, that is not aggression either. Leftists would disagree, but that is because they do not respect the non-aggression axiom enough. They hold other beliefs which are contradictory to it.

What about the case of animal cruelty? Clearly I have written multiple times that it is evil, but does not break the non-aggression axiom. The answer is simple: In my viewpoint animal cruelty is evil. This is just a personal opinion I hold. And this, though it might seem weak, is actually not weak at all. What we call my mere opinion is LAW on my private property just like non-aggression is the LAW in the world at large. Yes, my house is my Kingdom (Monarchism!). My word is Law on my property. In a leftist world this would be impossible because we do not really "own" land or space as property. No one can present a good enough explanation why not, of course, but they still claim so (even Herbert Spencer was on their side here!). I usually see this anti-land-ownership fetish as an old vestige of religious dogma as introduced into modern ethics by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Adam Smith.

Anarcho-capitalists are voluntaryists in the sense that we believe voluntary exchanges to be always mutually beneficial ex ante. If this makes me a moral relativist, then people like leftist anarchists are MORAL ILLUSIONISTS. Their morality cannot work. We cannot have an ideal utopia of mutually beneficial relations ex post facto because we do not know what effect our actions will have on both parties. Let me illustrate this with an example. If I give someone a million dollars, then in the voluntaryist morality I am perfectly entitled to do so and I am moral. So is the receiver of the money, he did nothing wrong. But now let's assume the next day he buys a Ferrari and accidentally runs it off of a huge cliff while his wife is in the car. Nobody can accuse me of wrongdoing, despite the fact that ex post facto my action of giving the man the money is what actually caused the car-accident. The accident would never have taken place if not for me! But I think we can all see how silly such thinking is. We cannot interrelate all actions in the world this way or else everyone would be guilty of everything. But to some people this is not so absurd. We can actually see leftists argue this way in socialist states where prisons are built for resocilization programs rather than punishments. After all, the individuals in the prisons are just a product of their society, the lefties say. The rapist and the thief were helpless! The society is guilty! We just put them in a comfy hotel for 5 years and let them out if they cry in front of a psychologist...